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“3 Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. 4 Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. 5 Let the same mind be in you that was[a] in Christ Jesus, 6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited…"
Philippians 2:3-6
Typically, we associate arrogance with speech: the bloviating opinion, the prideful boast, the name-dropping, the patronizing tone, the condescension, the insistence on the last word. However, what presages pompous speech is egotistic listening. You can be arrogant without saying a thing. One of the greatest impediments to progress or growth or peace is the assumption that you know more than the person who is speaking. The refusal to concede that we may know less than someone else is to deny that we are human and is evidence that we are proud stakeholders in the original sin, that quest to be our own gods. So sorry, that position has already been filled and our qualifications do not reach the minimum standards of divinity.
While healthy skepticism can be integral to discernment, persistent naked skepticism closes and strangles the mind, choking off any new knowledge that could illumine, reform, broaden, create, and even resuscitate life and love. I have long felt that the first sign of ignorance is intellectual arrogance. Samuel Wells observed that “we never know enough to be confident in the accuracy of our judgments.” We just do not possess the hardware or software for perfect clarity. Discipleship entails the admission that there is always something more to learn, some new bit of wisdom that broadens our understanding of how God speaks to us through the witness of others both known and anonymous to us. Knowledge becomes a prison when we assume we have all we need or possess more than anyone else. Listening is a gift as we acknowledge there is always so much more to learn. As the Wisdom writer observed, “Fools think their own way is right, but the wise listen to advice.” (Proverbs 12:15)
Grace and Peace,
Matt
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